Pan Macmillan March 2021 Highlights LOCAL The Upside of Down February release How Chaos and Uncertainty Breed Opportunity in South Africa Bruce Whitfield Next time you go to a conference or hire a consultant to be told, ‘We live in a VUCA [Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous] world,’ leave the room. You are wasting your time.
Fear of the future breeds inaction and leads to strategic paralysis. We put off decisions until we can have certainty. We look for signals. We wait. And while we do that, the world moves on around us. Problem-solvers thrive in chaotic and uncertain times because they act to change their future. Winners recognise that in a world of growing uncertainty, you need to resort to actions on things you can control. And the only things over which you have absolute control are your attitude and your mindset. These, in turn, determine the actions you will take and that will define your future.
A robust mindset is the one common characteristic Bruce Whitfield has identified in two decades of interrogating how South Africa’s billionaires and start-up mavericks think differently. They are not naive Pollyannas. They don’t ignore risk or hope that problems will go away. They constantly measure, manage, consider and weigh up opportunities in a tumultuous sea of uncertainty and find ways around obstacles. If, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller suggests, the stories we tell affect economic outcomes, then we need to tell different stories amidst the noise and haste of a rapidly evolving world.
• ISBN: 9781770107687 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Non-Fiction • Extent: TBC • Price: R199,00 Dr T A Guide to Sexual Health & Pleasure Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng
The indomitable Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng – affectionately known as Dr T – is passionate about making sexual health and well-being services available to all, regardless of their sexual and gender identities and their economic status.
This book is filled with the specifics of sexual anatomy and health as well as advice and facts about pleasure and sexual rights. Dr T, with her typically honest and warm approach, makes the reader feel comfortable reading about topics that are not always discussed freely, providing ALL the information that demystifies sex and sexuality in a way that is entertaining and enlightening.
• ISBN: 9781770107700 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Non-Fiction • Extent: TBC • Price: R199,00 HARDBACK FICTION The Affair Danielle Steel
The Affair is a compelling story of mothers and sisters who are there for you when things fall apart, from Danielle Steel whose countless number one bestsellers have made her the world’s favourite storyteller.
A year that none of them would ever forget... Rose McCarthy is the legendary editor in chief at one of New York’s top fashion magazines. Following the death of her husband some years ago, she and her four daughters have become even closer. All with successful careers, Athena is a TV chef, Venetia, a fashion designer, and Olivia, a court judge, while Nadia, the youngest, is a talented interior designer living in Paris.
Living in their elegant apartment overlooking the Seine, Nadia considered her life perfect, married to bestselling novelist, Nicolas Bateau, who adored her and their two daughters. Until the tabloid press leak a story of Nicolas’s affair with dazzling young actress, Pascal Solon. Heartbroken and publicly humiliated, Nadia looks to her family for comfort, support and help to try to put her life back on course. As mother and daughters spend more time together, they come to realize what matters most in life.
• ISBN: 9781529021462 • Format: Trade Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 288 • Price: R310,00 The Promise Lucy Diamond
When Patrick Sheppards suddenly and tragically dies, he leaves behind a family in pieces. Zoe has lost the love of her life. Ethan, Gabe and Beatrice have lost their larger-than-life dad. There’s a hole where Patrick should be and none of them can see a way forward.
For Patrick’s brother Dan, though: his mission is clear. He needs to help the Shepards to find some sort of happy again, and he makes a promise to himself to try and come close to the man Patrick was. But as he immerses himself in the frantic school run, dishing up tea and sorting the bills, Dan begins to see he might not have known the man Patrick really was, underneath it all. His brother was keeping secrets.
Juggling his heartbroken family and the catastrophic truth that could break them all over again, Dan has to face what he’s been keeping from himself all this time: what really happened on the night that Patrick died.
• ISBN: 9781529027037 • Format: Trade Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 480 • Price: R330,00 Pippo and Clara Diana Rosie
A country torn apart by war. Two siblings divided by fate. Italy, 1938. Mussolini is in power and war is not far away…
Clara and Pippo are just children: quiet, thoughtful Clara is the older sister; Pippo, the younger brother, is forever chatting. The family has only recently arrived in the city carrying their few possessions.
When Mamma goes missing early one morning, both Clara and Pippo go in search of her. Clara turns right; Pippo left. As a result of the choices they make that morning, their lives will be changed forever.
Diana Rosie’s Pippo and Clara tells the story of a family and a country divided. But will Clara and Pippo – and their mother – find each other again?
• ISBN: 9781447293064 • Format: Trade Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 336 • Price: R330,00 Daughters of the Night Laura Shepherd-Robinson From the brothels and gin-shops of Covent Garden to the elegant townhouses of Mayfair, Laura Shepherd-Robinson’s Daughters of Night follows Caroline Corsham as she seeks justice for a murdered woman whom London society would rather forget…
Lucia’s fingers found her own. She gazed at Caro as if from a distance. Her lips parted, her words a whisper: ‘He knows.’
London, 1782. Desperate for her politician husband to return home from France, Caroline ‘Caro’ Corsham is already in a state of anxiety when she finds a well-dressed woman mortally wounded in the bowers of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. The Bow Street constables are swift to act, until they discover that the deceased woman was a highly paid prostitute, at which point they cease to care entirely. But Caro has motives of her own for wanting to see justice done, and so sets out to solve the crime herself. Enlisting the help of thief taker Peregrine Child, their inquiry delves into the hidden corners of Georgian society, a world of artifice, deception and secret lives.
But with many gentlemen refusing to speak about their dealings with the dead woman, and Caro’s own reputation under threat, finding the killer will be harder, and more treacherous, than she can know… • ISBN: 9781509880836 • Format: Trade Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 592 • Price: R330,00 City of Vengeance D. V. Bishop
City of Vengeance is an explosive debut historical thriller by D. V. Bishop set in Renaissance Florence.
Florence. Winter, 1536. A prominent Jewish moneylender is murdered in his home, a death with wide implications in a city powered by immense wealth.
Cesare Aldo, a former soldier and now an officer of the Renaissance city's most feared criminal court, is given four days to solve the murder: catch the killer before the feast of Epiphany – or suffer the consequences.
During his investigations Aldo uncovers a plot to overthrow the volatile ruler of Florence, Alessandro de' Medici. If the Duke falls, it will endanger the whole city. But a rival officer of the court is determined to expose details about Aldo’s private life that could lead to his ruin. Can Aldo stop the conspiracy before anyone else dies, or will his own secrets destroy him first?
• ISBN: 9781529038781 • Format: Trade Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 416 • Price: R330,00 PAPERBACK FICTION The Numbers Game Danielle Steel
Eileen Jackson was happy to set aside her own career dreams in order to raise a family with her husband Paul. But when she discovers Paul’s affair with a younger woman, she begins to question all those years of sacrifice and compromise. On the brink of forty, she fears it is too late to start over.
Meanwhile, Paul’s girlfriend Olivia is struggling to find herself while in the shadow of her mother, a famous actress, and her grandmother, a fiercely independent artist. With their love and support, Olivia takes a major professional step. But she realizes she still has much to learn about herself before committing her life to someone else.
Ultimately, Eileen decides to chase her own dreams as well, thousands of miles away in Paris. What awaits is an adventure that transforms her life. At every age, there are challenges to be met and new worlds to discover. The Numbers Game is a reminder that it’s never too late to turn a new page and start again.
• ISBN: 9781509878345 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 336 • Price: R195,00 The Last Trial Scott Turow
From the bestselling author of Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow’s The Last Trial recounts the final case of Kindle County’s most revered courtroom advocate, Sandy Stern.
On the brink of retirement, legendary defence attorney Sandy Stern is persuaded to take on one last case to defend an old friend.
Dr Kiril Pafko, a former Nobel Prize winner and distinguished cancer researcher, is now, shockingly, facing charges of fraud, insider trading and even murder. As the trial progresses, Stern will question everything he thought he knew about his friend. Despite Pafko's many failings, is he innocent of the terrible charges laid against him? Stern's duty to defend his client and his belief in the power of the judicial system will face a final, terrible test in the courtroom, where the evidence and reality are sometimes worlds apart…
• ISBN: 9781529039108 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 464 • Price: R220,00 Can You See Me Now? Trisha Sakhlecha
From Trisha Sakhlecha, Can You See Me Now? is a gripping psychological suspense thriller about a young Indian woman, now a government minister, whose past secrets are about to reverberate into the present and shatter her life. Perfect for fans of Lisa Jewell and Erin Kelly.
Fifteen years ago, three sixteen-year-old girls meet at Wescott, an exclusive private school in India.
Two, Sabah and Noor, are the most popular girls in their year. One, Alia, is a new arrival from England, who feels her happiness depends on their acceptance. Before she knows it, Sabah and Noor’s intoxicating world of privilege and intimacy opens up to Alia and, for the first time, after years of neglect from her parents, she feels she is exactly where, and with whom, she belongs.
But with intimacy comes jealousy, and with privilege, resentment, and Alia finds that it only takes one night for her bright new world to shatter around her. Now Alia, a cabinet minister in the Indian government, is about to find her secrets have no intention of staying buried…
• ISBN: 9781509886340 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 416 • Price: R220,00 If I Can’t Have You Charlotte Levin
If I Can't Have You by Charlotte Levin is an all-consuming novel about loneliness, obsession and how far we go for the ones we love.
My name is Constance Little. This is my love story. But this isn’t the way it was supposed to end.
After fleeing Manchester for London, Constance attempts to put past tragedies behind her and make a fresh start. When she embarks on a relationship with the new doctor at the medical practice where she works, she’s convinced she’s finally found the love and security she craves.
Then he ends it. But if life has taught her anything, it’s that if you love someone, you should never let them go.
That's why for Constance Little, her obsession is only just beginning…
• ISBN: 9781529032420 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 416 • Price: R220,00 The Animals at Lockwood Manor Jane Healey August 1939.
Thirty-year-old Hetty Cartwright is tasked with the evacuation and safekeeping of the natural history museum’s collection of mammals. Once she and her exhibits arrive at Lockwood Manor, however, where they are to stay for the duration of the war, Hetty soon realizes that she’s taken on more than she’d bargained for.
Protecting her charges from the irascible Lord Lockwood and resentful servants is work enough, but when some of the animals go missing, and worse, Hetty begins to suspect someone – or something – is stalking her through the darkened corridors of the house.
As the disasters mount, Hetty finds herself falling under the spell of Lucy, Lord Lockwood’s beautiful but clearly haunted daughter. But why is Lucy so traumatized? Does she know something she’s not telling? And is there any truth to local rumours of ghosts and curses?
Part love story, part mystery, The Animals at Lockwood Manor by Jane Healey is a gripping and atmospheric tale of family madness, long-buried secrets and hidden desires.
• ISBN: 9781529014198 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 352 • Price: R220,00 The Unspoken Name A. K. Larkwood
Does she owe her life to those planning her death…
Csorwe was raised by a death cult steeped in old magic. And on her fourteenth birthday, she’ll be sacrificed to their god. But as she waits for the end, she’s offered a chance to escape her fate. A sorcerer wants her as his assistant, sword-hand and assassin. As this involves her not dying that day, she accepts.
Csorwe spends years living on a knife-edge, helping her master hunt an artefact which could change many worlds. Then comes the day she's been dreading. They encounter Csorwe’s old cult – seeking the same magical object – and Csorwe is forced to reckon with her past. She also meets Shuthmili, the warmage who’ll change her future.
If she’s to survive, Csorwe must evade her enemies, claim the artefact and stop the death cult once and for all. As she plunges from one danger to the next, the hunt is on…
The Unspoken Name by A. K. Larkwood is the incredible first book in the Serpent Gates duology.
• ISBN: 9781529032765 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 576 • Price: R220,00 Witchshadow Susan Dennard Susan Dennard’s New York Times bestselling fantasy series continues – with the story of the Threadwitch Iseult.
War has come to the Witchlands…and nothing will be the same again. Iseult has found her heartsister Safi at last, but their reunion is brief. For Iseult to stay alive, she must flee Cartorra while Safi remains. And though Iseult has plans to save her friend, they will require her to summon magic more dangerous than anything she has ever faced before.
Meanwhile, the Bloodwitch Aeduan is beset by forces he cannot understand. And Vivia – rightful queen of Nubrevna – finds herself without a crown or home.
As villains from legend reawaken across the Witchlands, only the mythical Cahr Awen can stop the gathering war. Iseult could embrace this power and heal the land, but first she must choose on which side of the shadows her destiny will lie.
Witchshadow is the fourth book in the Witchlands series by bestselling author Susan Dennard.
• ISBN: 9781529030327 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 464 • Price: R220,00 HARDBACK NON-FICTION Revolt Nadav Eyal Revolt is a provocative challenge to the prevailing wisdom about the rise of nationalism and populism today. With a vibrant and informed voice, Nadav Eyal illustrates how modern globalization is unsustainable. He contends that the collapse of the current world order is not so much about the imbalance between technological advances and social progress, or the breakdown of liberal democracy, as it is about a passion to upend and destroy power structures that have become hollow, corrupt, or simply unresponsive to urgent needs. Eyal illuminates the forces both benign and malignant that have so rapidly transformed our economic, political, and cultural realities, shedding light not only on the globalized revolution that has come to define our time but also on the counterrevolution waged by those globalization has marginalized and exploited.
With a mixture of journalistic narrative, penetrating vignettes, and original analysis, Revolt shows that within the mainstream the left and right have much in common. Eyal shows how their stories feed our current state of unrest. More than just an analysis of the present, though, Revolt also takes a hard look at lessons from the past, from the Opium Wars in China to colonialist Haiti to the Marshall Plan. With these historical ties, Eyal shows that the roots of revolt have always been deep and strong. The current uprisings are no passing phenomenon—revolt is the new status quo.
• ISBN: 9781529031867 • Format: Trade Paperback • Genre: Non-Fiction • Extent: 528 • Price: R360,00 Working Backwards DRAFT Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon Colin Bryar and Bill Carr Colin started at Amazon in 1998; Bill joined in 1999. In Working Backwards, these two long- serving Amazon executives reveal and codify the principles and practices that drive the success of one of the most extraordinary companies the world has ever known. With twenty-seven years of Amazon experience between them, much of it in the early aughts—a period of unmatched innovation that brought products and services including Kindle, Amazon Prime, Amazon Studios, and Amazon Web Services to life—Bryar and Carr offer unprecedented access to the Amazon way as it was refined, articulated, and proven to be repeatable, scalable, and adaptable.
With keen analysis and practical steps for applying it at your own company—no matter the size—the authors illuminate how Amazon’s fourteen leadership principles inform decision- making at all levels and reveal how the company’s culture has been defined by four characteristics: customer obsession, long-term thinking, eagerness to invent, and operational excellence.
Working Backwards is a practical guidebook and a corporate narrative, filled with the authors’ in-the-room recollections of what “Being Amazonian” is like and how it has affected their personal and professional lives. They demonstrate that success on Amazon’s scale is not achieved by the genius of any single leader, but rather through commitment to and execution of a set of well-defined, rigorously-executed principles and practices—shared here for the very first time. • ISBN: 9781529033830 • Format: Trade Paperback • Genre: Non-Fiction • Extent: 304 • Price: R330,00 Saving Justice Truth, Transparency and Trust James Comey
James Comey, former FBI Director and Sunday Times number one bestselling author of A Higher Loyalty, uses his long career in federal law enforcement to explore issues of justice and fairness in the US justice system.
James Comey might best be known as the FBI director that Donald Trump fired in 2017, but he’s had a long, varied career in the law and justice system. He knows better than most just what a force for good the US justice system can be, and how far afield it has strayed during the Trump Presidency.
In his much-anticipated follow-up to A Higher Loyalty, Comey uses anecdotes and lessons from his career to show how the federal justice system works. From prosecuting mobsters as an Assistant US Attorney in the Southern District of New York in the 1980s to grappling with the legalities of antiterrorism work as the Deputy Attorney General in the early 2000s to, of course, his tumultuous stint as FBI director beginning in 2013, Comey shows just how essential it is to pursue the primacy of truth for federal law enforcement. Saving Justice is gracefully written
• ISBN: 9781529062823 • Format: Trade Paperback • Genre: Non-Fiction • Extent: 240 • Price: R330,00 Brown Baby A Memoir of Race, Family and Home Nikesh Shukla
‘A wise and wonderful book from the hugely talented Nikesh Shukla. Written for his daughters, inspired by his mother whom they never got to meet, this love letter to his brown babies encompasses fatherhood, feminism, racial politics, growing up and being a grown up, with tenderness, depth and humour.’ Meera Syal
How do you find hope and even joy in a world that is racist, sexist and facing climate crisis? How do you prepare your children for it, but also fill them with all the boundlessness and eccentricity that they deserve and that life has to offer?
In Brown Baby Nikesh Shukla explores themes of racism, feminism, parenting and our shifting ideas of home. With writing that will both fill and open your heart, this by turns, heartbreaking, hilariously funny and intensely relatable memoir is dedicated to the author’s two young daughters, and is in remembrance of the grandmother they never got to meet. Through love, grief, food, fatherhood and the often cluttered experiences that make us each who we are, Shukla shows how it’s possible to believe in hope.
• ISBN: 9781529041668 • Format: Trade Paperback • Genre: Non-Fiction • Extent: 256 • Price: R330,00 Clean & Green 101 Hints and Tips for a More Eco-Friendly Home Nancy Birtwhistle
Simple swaps and innovative ideas for cleaning and maintaining your home that won't cost the Earth. Learn how easy it is to make simple swaps in your cleaning and tidying methods for a more eco-friendly home.
This beautifully illustrated black and white guide with 101 hints and sustainable, natural cleaning tips and hacks will help you take small steps that have a massive positive environmental impact. In Clean & Green, Nancy Birtwhistle shares the simple recipes and methods she has developed since making a conscious effort to live more sustainably, many of which are faster and easier than the go-to products and methods most of us use now.
From everyday cleaning and laundry tips to zero-effort oven cleaner and guidance on removing tricky stains from clothing and furniture, these economical, practical methods are perfect for anyone looking to reduce their use of plastic and throwaway products. Nancy shares her tried-and-tested recipes for all-purpose cleaners, replacements for harmful chemicals as well as planners and to-do lists that will keep both your home and the planet clean and green for future generations.
• ISBN: 9781529049725 • Format: Hardback • Genre: Non-Fiction • Extent: 304 • Price: R320,00 Solo The Joy of Cooking for One Signe Johansen
Packed with advice for keeping a streamlined larder and tips for late night fridge foraging, Solo: The Joy of Cooking for One will inspire you to cook delicious food, every day.
Many of us cook for one on a regular basis – isn't it time we became more selfish in the kitchen? Celebrating the joy of self-reliance and self-sufficiency, Signe Johansen, author of How to Hygge, shares eighty fabulous recipes for happy solo cooking.
Beautifully photographed and designed, the cookbook includes a range of tasty and uncomplicated no-cook fast food and one-pot dishes to transform your daily routine. Signe shows how to make big batch recipes that you can reinvent and enjoy throughout the week. There's also a chapter with more adventurous recipes for when time is on your side.
• ISBN: 9781529064940 • Format: Trade Paperback • Genre: Cookery • Extent: 280 • Price: R330,00 PICADOR NON-FICTION How to be a Refugee One Family's Story of Exile and Belonging Simon May The most familiar fate of Jews living in Hitler’s Germany is either emigration or deportation to concentration camps. But there was another, much rarer, side to Jewish life at that time: denial of your origin to the point where you manage to erase almost all consciousness of it. You refuse to believe that you are Jewish. How to Be a Refugee is Simon May’s gripping account of how three sisters – his mother and his two aunts – grappled with what they felt to be a lethal heritage. Their very different trajectories included conversion to Catholicism, marriage into the German aristocracy, securing ‘Aryan’ status with high-ranking help from inside Hitler’s regime, and engagement to a card-carrying Nazi.
Even after his mother fled to London from Nazi Germany and Hitler had been defeated, her instinct for self-concealment didn’t abate. Following the early death of his father, also a German Jewish refugee, May was raised a Catholic and forbidden to identify as Jewish or German or British.
In the face of these banned inheritances, May embarks on a quest to uncover the lives of the three sisters as well as the secrets of a grandfather he never knew. His haunting story forcefully illuminates questions of belonging and home – questions that continue to press in on us today.
• ISBN: 9781529042856 • Format: Trade Paperback • Genre: Non-Fiction • Extent: 320 • Price: R330,00 Alexa, what is there to know about love? Brian Bilston
Alexa, what is there to know about love? is a wonderful collection of poems about love in all its forms, covering everything from romantic love to familial love, to long-distance love, and even love on the internet.
The collection also features poems about the true passions for many booklovers, reading and literature, and the odd one about the subject causing many of us heartbreak: politics. With titles like ‘Hold My Hand While We Jump Off This Cliff’ and ‘Remembrance of Things Pasta’, there’s something for even the most jaded romantic within these pages.
The perfect, witty gift for Valentine’s and beyond.
• ISBN: 9781529051629 • Format: Hardback • Genre: Poetry • Extent: 96 • Price: R299,00 Empty Nest Carol Ann Duffy
In this stunning anthology Carol Ann Duffy has selected 99 poems exploring parenting.
The special bond between parent and child is both powerful and unique. And yet there is a time when that bond must ease, where our grip on that dear one must loosen, when we must let them go whether we are ready to or not.
In Empty Nest, a beautiful selection of modern and classic poems range along the tender line between parent and child, covering growing old, the deep love of a parent, the everyday of family life and leaving home to live an independent life, but also unthinkable grief, loss and estrangement. Some of our very favourite poets feature in the selection, such as Elizabeth Bishop, Jackie Kay, Simon Armitage, Shakespeare, Imtiaz Dharker, Seamus Heaney and Don Paterson.
These poems are by turns wry, affecting, profound, melancholy and wise; they will console and comfort those suddenly facing a house that’s much cleaner but also much quieter than it was. There is something here for every reader to treasure.
• ISBN: 9781529028683 • Format: Hardback • Genre: Poetry • Extent: 128 • Price: R330,00 The Quiet Americans Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War - A Tragedy in Three Acts Scott Anderson At the end of World War II, the United States dominated the world militarily, economically, and in moral standing – seen as the victor over tyranny and a champion of freedom. But it was clear – to some – that the Soviet Union was already executing a plan to expand and foment revolution around the world. The American government’s strategy in response relied on the secret efforts of a newly-formed CIA.
The Quiet Americans chronicles the exploits of four spies – Michael Burke, a charming former football star fallen on hard times, Frank Wisner, the scion of a wealthy Southern family, Peter Sichel, a sophisticated German Jew who escaped the Nazis, and Edward Lansdale, a brilliant ad executive. The four ran covert operations across the globe, trying to outwit the ruthless KGB in Berlin, parachuting commandos into Eastern Europe, plotting coups, and directing wars against Communist insurgents in Asia.
But time and again their efforts went awry, thwarted by a combination of stupidity and ideological rigidity at the highest levels of the government – and more profoundly, the decision to abandon American ideals. Scott Anderson’s The Quiet Americans is the story of these four men. It is also the story of how the United States, at the very pinnacle of its power, managed to permanently damage its moral standing in the world.
• ISBN: 9781529042474 • Format: Hardback • Genre: Non-Fiction • Extent: 576 • Price: R499,00 A Place for Everything The Curious History of Alphabetical Order Judith Flanders
One we've learned it as children few of us think much of the alphabet and its familiar sing-song order. And yet the order if the alphabet, that simple knowledge that we take for granted, plays a major role in our adult lives. From the school register to the telephone book, from dictionaries and encyclopaedias to library shelves, our lives are ordered from A to Z. Long before Google searches, this magical system of organisation gave us the ability to sift through centuries of thought, knowledge and literature, allowing us to sort, to file, and to find the information we have, and to locate the information we need.
In A Place for Everything, Judith Flanders fascinatingly lays out the gradual triumph of alphabetical order, from its possible earliest days as a sorting tool in the Great Library of Alexandria in the third century BCE, to its current decline in prominence in our digital age of Wikipedia and Google. Along the way, the reader is enlightened and entertained with a wonderful cast of unknown facts, characters and stories from the great collector Robert Cotton, who denominated his manuscripts with the names of the busts of the Roman emperors surmounting his book cases, to the unassuming sixteenth-century London bookseller who ushered in a revolution by listing his authors by 'sirname' first.
• ISBN: 9781509881581 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Non-Fiction • Extent: 368 • Price: R230,00 PICADOR FICTION Mother for Dinner Shalom Auslander
Seventh Seltzer has done everything he can to break from the traditions of the past, but in his overbearing, narcissistic mother’s last moments, she whispers in his ear the two words he always knew she would: ‘Eat me’.
This is not unusual, as the Seltzers are Cannibal-Americans, a once proud and thriving ethnic group, but for Seventh, it raises some serious questions. Of practical concern, she’s six-foot-two and weighs over thirty stone – even divided up between Seventh and his eleven brothers, that's a lot of red meat. Plus, Second keeps kosher, Ninth is vegan and Sixth is dead. To make matters worse, even if he can wrangle his brothers together for a feast, the Can-Am people have assimilated, and the only living Cannibal who knows how to perform the ancient ritual is their Uncle Ishmael, a far from reliable guide.
Beyond the practical, Seventh struggles with the sense of guilt and responsibility he feels – to his mother, to his people and to his unique cultural heritage. His mother always taught him he was a link in a chain, stretching back centuries. But he’s getting tired of chains. Shalom Auslander's Mother for Dinner is an outrageously tasty comedy about identity and inheritance, the things we owe our families and the things we owe ourselves.
• ISBN: 9781529052060 • Format: Trade Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 272 • Price: R330,00 Bridget Jones’ Diary 25th Anniversary edition Helen Fielding
Chardonnay. Cigarettes. Smug Marrieds. Big pants. Emotional f**wittage.
Bridget Jones’s Diary is the book that started it all for the nation’s favourite singleton, hilariously documenting the thirty-something’s daily struggles with calorie-counting, family woes, workplace drama and, most pressingly of all, the eternal question: Daniel Cleaver or Mark Darcy?
Welcome to Bridget Jones’s Diary: mercilessly funny, endlessly relatable and utterly addictive.
Featuring an exclusive new introduction and new diary entries from Helen Fielding – alongside original newspaper articles and interviews – this special edition is a must-have for Bridget fans.
• ISBN: 9781529057072 • Format: Hardback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 416 • Price: R330,00 Kololo Hill Neema Shah When you’re left with nothing but your secrets, how do you start again?
Uganda 1972.
A devastating decree is issued: all Ugandan Asians must leave the country in ninety days. They must take only what they can carry, give up their money and never return.
For Asha and Pran, married a matter of months, it means abandoning the family business that Pran has worked so hard to save. For his mother, Jaya, it means saying goodbye to the house that has been her home for decades. But violence is escalating in Kampala, and people are disappearing. Will they all make it to safety in Britain and will they be given refuge if they do?
And all the while, a terrible secret about the expulsion hangs over them, threatening to tear the family apart. From the green hilltops of Kampala, to the terraced houses of London, Neema Shah’s extraordinarily moving debut Kololo Hill explores what it means to leave your home behind, what it takes to start again, and the lengths some will go to protect their loved ones.
• ISBN: 9781529030518 • Format: Trade Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 352 • Price: R330,00 The Art of Losing Alice Zeniter Naïma has always known that her family came from Algeria – but up until now, that meant very little to her. Born and raised in France, her knowledge of that foreign country is limited to what she’s learned from her grandparents’ tiny flat in a crumbling French sink estate: the food cooked for her, the few precious things they brought with them when they fled.
On the past, her family is silent. Why was her grandfather Ali forced to leave? Was he a harki – an Algerian who worked for and supported the French during the Algerian War of Independence? Once a wealthy landowner, how did he become an immigrant scratching a living in France? Naïma’s father, Hamid, says he remembers nothing. A child when the family left, in France he re-made himself: education was his ticket out of the family home, the key to acceptance into French society. But now, for the first time since they left, one of Ali’s family is going back. Naïma will see Algeria for herself, will ask the questions about her family’s history that, till now, have had no answers.
Spanning three generations across seventy years, Alice Zeniter’s The Art of Losing tells the story of how people carry on in the face of loss: the loss of a country, an identity, a way to speak to your children. It’s a story of colonization and immigration, and how in some ways, we are a product of the things we’ve left behind. Translated from the French by Frank Wynne.
• ISBN: 9781509884124 • Format: Trade Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 400 • Price: R330,00 Nightshift Kiare Ladner Nightshift is a story of obsession set in London’s liminal world of nightshift workers.
When twenty-three-year-old Meggie meets distant and enigmatic Sabine, she recognizes in her the person she would like to be. Giving up her daytime existence, her reliable boyfriend, and the trappings of a normal life in favour of working the same nightshifts as Sabine could be the perfect escape for Meggie. She finds a liberating sense of freedom in indulging her growing preoccupation with Sabine and plunges herself into another existence, gradually immersing herself in the transient and uncertain world of the nightshift worker.
Dark, sexy, frightening, Nightshift explores ambivalent female friendship, sexual attraction and lives that defy easy categorization. London’s stark urban reality is rendered other-worldly and strange as Meggie’s sleep deprivation, drinking and fixation with Sabine gain a momentum all of their own. Can Meggie really lose herself in her trying to become someone else?
A novel of obsession and desire, Kiare Ladner’s Nightshift is a beautiful and moving debut which asks profound questions about who we are and if we can ever really truly escape ourselves.
• ISBN: 9781529010398 • Format: Trade Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 256 • Price: R330,00 The Most Precious of Cargoes Jean-Claude Grumberg In the gentle tone of a fable, Jean-Claude Grumberg’s The Most Precious of Cargoes tells the moving story of a woman who wanted a child, and a child who needed a home.
Once upon a time in an enormous forest, there lived a poor woodcutter and his wife. Around them a war wages, and hunger is a constant companion. Yet every night, the woodcutter’s wife prays for a child.
A Jewish father rides on a train holding twin babies. His wife no longer has enough milk to feed both children. In hopes of saving them both, he wraps his daughter in a shawl and throws her into the forest.
While foraging for food, the woodcutter’s wife finds a bundle, a baby girl wrapped in a shawl. She knows that this little girl will be hunted, but she cannot ignore this gift: she will accept the precious cargo, and raise her as her own.
Set against the horrors of the Holocaust and told with a fairytale-like lyricism, The Most Precious of Cargoes is a fable about family and redemption which reminds us that humanity can be found in the most inhumane of places.
• ISBN: 9781529019568 • Format: Hardback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 144 • Price: R299,00 The Glass Hotel Emily St. John Mandel
Vincent is the beautiful bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star glass-andcedar palace on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. New York financier Jonathan Alkaitis owns the hotel. When he passes Vincent his card with a tip, it’s the beginning of their life together. That same day, a hooded figure scrawls a note on the windowed wall of the hotel: ‘Why don’t you swallow broken glass.’
Leon Prevant, a shipping executive for a company called Neptune-Avramidis, sees the note from the hotel bar and is shaken to his core. Thirteen years later Vincent mysteriously disappears from the deck of a Neptune-Avramidis ship.
Weaving together the lives of these characters, Emily St. John Mandel’s The Glass Hotel moves between the ship, the towers of Manhattan and the wilderness of remote British Columbia, painting a breathtaking picture of greed and guilt, fantasy and delusion, art and the ghosts of our pasts.
• ISBN: 9781529065619 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 320 • Price: R220,00 The Hiding Game Naomi Wood
The Hiding Game is an intoxicating story of love and betrayal, set in the Bauhaus art school. Heady, gripping and unforgettable, Naomi Wood’s third novel explores the perils of secrecy in a changing and increasingly dangerous world.
In Roaring Twenties Germany, Paul, Charlotte and Walter meet at the Bauhaus art school. The trio form a close-knit group, in which passions and rivalries collide. But when Walter is betrayed, he makes a terrible mistake – a secret he will keep from Paul and Charlottefor as long as he can.
As political tensions escalate and the Nazis gain power, Walter’s secret – hidden in notebooks, paintings and blueprints – ultimately threatens the very lives of his friends, with devastating consequences.
Shortlisted for the Historical Writers' Association Gold Crown Award.
• ISBN: 9781509892808 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 352 • Price: R220,00 Amnesty Aravind Adiga From the bestselling, Man Booker Prize-winning author of The White Tiger and Selection Day, Aravind Adiga, comes the story of an undocumented immigrant who becomes the only witness to a crime and must face an impossible moral dilemma.
Danny – Dhananjaya Rajaratnam – is an undocumented immigrant in Sydney, denied refugee status after he has fled from his native Sri Lanka. Working as a cleaner, living out of a grocery storeroom, for three years he’s been trying to create a new identity for himself. And now, with his beloved vegan girlfriend, Sonja, with his hidden accent and highlights in his hair, he is as close as he has ever come to living a normal Australian life.
But then one morning, Danny learns a female client of his has been murdered. When Danny recognizes a jacket left at the murder scene, he believes it belongs to another of his clients – a doctor with whom he knows the woman was having an affair. Suddenly Danny is confronted with a choice: come forward with his knowledge about the crime and risk being deported, or say nothing, and let justice go undone? Over the course of a single day, evaluating the weight of his past, his dreams for the future, and the unpredictable, often absurd reality of living invisibly and undocumented, he must wrestle with his conscience and decide if a person without rights still has responsibilities. Suspenseful, propulsive, and full of Aravind Adiga’s signature wit and magic, Amnesty is both a timeless moral struggle and a universal story with particular urgency today. • ISBN: 9781509879052 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 352 • Price: R220,00 Jack & Bet Sarah Butler
Jack & Bet have been married for seventy years. Happily so, for the most part. Now, all they want is to enjoy the time they have left together in their small flat. But their son Tommy has other ideas: he thinks they should move out and opt in for round-the-clock care in a very different kind of home.
When a young Romanian woman, Marinela, enters their lives, Bet thinks she might have found a solution to all of their problems and one that could change Marinela’s life for the better. But doing so would mean confronting a long-buried secret Bet has kept hidden from everyone, even Jack, for decades.
An irresistibly moving story about love and loss, Jack & Bet is at once a story of unlikely friendship and a tender look at a lifelong struggle to find a place to call home.
• ISBN: 9781509898176 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 352 • Price: R220,00 Cleanness Garth Greenwall 'Cleanness is stunning, provocatively revelatory and atmospherically profound. Here is love and sex as art, as pulse, as truth' - Lisa Taddeo, author of Three Women.
Sofia, Bulgaria, a landlocked city in southern Europe, stirs with hope and impending upheaval. Soviet buildings crumble, wind scatters sand from the far south, and political protesters flood the streets with song. In this atmosphere of disquiet, an American teacher navigates a life transformed by the discovery and loss of love. As he prepares to leave the place he’s come to call home, he grapples with the intimate encounters that have marked his years abroad, each bearing uncanny reminders of his past. A queer student’s confession recalls his own first love, a stranger’s seduction devolves into paternal sadism, and a romance with a younger man opens, and heals, old wounds. Each echo reveals startling insights about what it means to seek connection: with those we love, with the places we inhabit, and with our own fugitive selves.
Cleanness revisits and expands the world of Garth Greenwell’s beloved debut, What Belongs to You, declared ‘an instant classic’ by the New York Times Book Review. In exacting, elegant prose, Greenwell transcribes the strange dialects of desire, cementing his stature as one of our most vital living writers.
• ISBN: 9781509874675 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 240 • Price: R220,00 The Young Team Graeme Armstrong
Azzy Williams is ready. Ready to smoke, pop pills, drink wine and ready to fight. But most of all, he’s ready to do anything for his friends, his gang, his young team.
Round here, in the schemes of the forgotten industrial heartland of Scotland, your mates, your young team – they’re everything.
Azzy Williams is fourteen; a rising star, this is his life and he loves it. Azzy Williams is seventeen; he’s out of control. Azzy Williams is twenty-one; he’d like to leave it all behind. But a way out isn’t easy to find…
Inspired by the experiences of its author, Graeme Armstrong, The Young Team is an energetic novel, full of the loyalty, laughs, mischief, boredom, violence and threat of life on these streets. It looks beyond the tabloid stereotypes to tell a powerful story about the realities of life for young people in Britain today.
• ISBN: 9781529017366 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 352 • Price: R220,00 Cowboy Graves Three Novellas Roberto Bolaño One more journey to the literary universe of Roberto Bolaño, an essential voice of contemporary Latin American literature Roberto Bolaño’s boundless imagination and seemingly inexhaustible gift for shaping the chaos of his reality into enduring fiction is unmistakable in these three exhilarating novellas.
In Cowboy Graves, Arturo Belano – Bolaño’s alter ego – returns to Chile after the coup to fight with his comrades for socialism. ‘French Comedy of Horrors’ takes the reader to French Guiana on the night after an eclipse where a seventeen- year-old answers a pay phone and finds himself recruited into the Clandestine Surrealist Group, a secret society of artists based in the sewers of Paris. And in ‘Fatherland’, a young poet reckons with the fascist overthrow of his country, as the woman he is obsessed with disappears in the ensuing violence and a Third Reich fighter plane mysteriously writes her poetry in the sky overhead.
Cowboy Graves is an unexpected treasure from the vault of a master of contemporary fiction. These three fiercely original tales bear the signatures of Bolaño’s extraordinary body of work, echoing the strange characters and uncanny scenes of his great triumphs, while deepening our understanding of his profound gifts.
• ISBN: 9781509851935 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 208 • Price: R220,00 Mountain Road, Late at Night Alan Rossi
Nicholas and April are driving home from a party when their car crashes on an empty road high up in the Blue Ridge Mountains. As they lay on the roadside slowly dying, their four-year-old son, Jack, waits for them at home. In the days after their deaths, their grieving relatives begin to descend on the family home.
There, they are forced to decide who will care for the child Nicholas and April left behind. Nicholas’s brother Nathaniel and his wife Stefanie aren’t ready to be parents, but Nicholas’s mother and father have issues of their own. And April’s mother Tammy is driving across the country to claim her grandson.
Spanning a few traumatic days in the minds of each family member, this is a masterly portrait of grief, the pain of sudden loss and a family in utter crisis. Gripping, affecting and extremely accomplished, this unforgettable story asks one crucial question: what do you do when the worst happens?
• ISBN: 9781529002362 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 256 • Price: R220,00 Little Bandaged Days Kyra Wilder
A mother moves to Geneva with her husband and their two young children. In their beautiful new rented apartment, surrounded by their rented furniture, and several Swiss instructions to maintain quiet, she finds herself totally isolated. Her husband’s job means he is almost never present, and her entire world is caring for her children – making sure they are happy, and fed and comfortable, and that they can be seen as the happy, well-fed, comfortable family they should be. Everything is perfect.
But, of course, it’s not. The isolation, the sleeplessness, the demands of two people under two, are getting to Erika. She has never been so alone, and once the children are asleep, there are just too many hours to fill until morning…
Kyra Wilder’s Little Bandaged Days is a beautifully written, painfully claustrophobic story about a woman’s descent into madness. Unpredictable, frighteningly compelling and brutally honest, it grapples with the harsh conditions of motherhood and this mother’s own identity, and as it continues, we begin to wonder just what exactly Erika might be driven to do.
• ISBN: 9781529017403 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 256 • Price: R220,00 REISSUE The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy The Complete Trilogy in Five Parts Douglas Adams
A special 42nd anniversary edition of Douglas Adams' mega-selling cult classic: now in one handy paperback volume!
A phenomenon across all formats, this 42nd anniversary paperback omnibus contains the complete Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy in five parts, charting the whole of Arthur Dent's odyssey through space and time. Share and enjoy.
Collected together in this omnibus are the five titles that comprise Douglas Adams' wildly popular and wholly remarkable comedy science fiction 'trilogy', introductions to each book, expanded material from the Douglas Adams archives plus a bonus short story, Young Zaphod Plays It Safe, and a special undeleted scene.
• ISBN: 9781529051438 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 832 • Price: R330,00 Empire in Black and Gold Adrian Tchaikovsky
Empire in Black and Gold is the first instalment in the critically-acclaimed fantasy series Shadows of the Aptby Adrian Tchaikovsky, author of the Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning Children of Time.
The days of peace are over…
The city states of the Lowlands have lived in peace and prosperity for decades, hailed as bastions of civilization and sophistication. That peace is about to end. Far from the Lowlands, an ancient empire has been conquering city after city with its highly trained armies and sophisticated combat techniques. Now it's set its sights on a new prize.
Only the ageing Stenwold Maker – spymaster, artificer and statesman – can see the threat. So it falls upon his shoulders to open the eyes of his people. For war will sweep across their lands, burning away everything in its path. Yet first, he must stop himself from becoming the empire's latest victim.
Empire in Black and Gold is followed by the second book in the Shadows of the Apt series, Dragonfly Falling.
• ISBN: 9781529050264 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 624 • Price: R230,00 Dragonfly Falling Adrian Tchaikovsky Dragonfly Falling is the second book in the critically acclaimed epic fantasy series Shadows of the Apt by Adrian Tchaikovsky, author of the Arthur C. Clarke Award- winning Children of Time. Every hero must be tested…
The Wasp Empire’s armies are on the move. The city of Tark will be first to feel their might, now preparing for siege. And within its walls, Salma and Totho will take a stand alongside their Ant-kinden brethren. But they’ll face weaponry and numbers such as the Lowlands have never seen.
Meanwhile, the Empire's secret service has deemed Stenwold Maker too dangerous to live. So Major Thalric is dispatched to eliminate Stenwold and destroy his beloved city of Collegium. For if this centre of learning is lost, it will crush all hope of intelligent resistance.
As the Empire's troops continue their relentless advance, their young Emperor pursues another, even darker goal. His success would trigger a reign of blood lasting a thousand years.
Dragonfly Falling is followed by the third book in the Shadows of the Apt series, Blood of the Mantis.
• ISBN: 9781529050288 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 688 • Price: R230,00 Easy Kill Lin Anderson
A disturbing discovery is made in a Glasgow cemetery in Easy Kill, the fifth novel in Lin Anderson's forensic crime series featuring Rhona MacLeod.
A vulnerable young woman has been brutally slain and left on a grave in Glasgow’s sprawling cemetery, the Necropolis. Upon examining the body, forensic scientist Rhona MacLeod has no doubt that the depraved killer’s motives were sexual in nature.
The case takes on an even more disturbing dimension when the removal of the girl’s body reveals a second victim, who has recently been buried in a shallow grave underneath. When yet another sex worker is reported missing, there are fears that a serial killer is at large in the city.
This man has killed before – and will again unless Rhona can break the chain and track him down before any more lives are lost…
• ISBN: 9781529024814 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 416 • Price: R220,00 Final Cut Lin Anderson
A terrifying serial killer is on the loose in Final Cut, the sixth novel in Lin Anderson's forensic crime series featuring Rhona MacLeod.
When Claire regains consciousness after a stranger causes her car to crash in a snowstorm, she is frantic to discover that her nine-year-old daughter Emma is missing from the back seat. Then Emma is found in the woods nearby, unharmed but cradling a child’s skull. She claims it ‘called’ to her – and she can hear another voice nearby…
Meanwhile, forensic scientist Rhona MacLeod is trying to discover the identity of a corpse found badly burnt in a skip. The body is wearing a soldier’s ID tag, but DNA tests show it’s not him. When DS Michael McNab asks for her help identifying the remains Emma found, they discover the two cases are linked in ways they could never have imagined…
• ISBN: 9781529024838 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 384 • Price: R220,00 Excursion to Tindari Andrea Camilleri
The fifth in the hit Italian crime series by Andrea Camilleri, Excursion to Tindari is a darkly comic detective story featuring Inspector Montalbano. Maybe a phrase, a line, a hint somewhere would reveal a reason, any reason, for the elderly couple's disappearance . . .
A young Don Juan is found murdered in front of his apartment building early one morning, and an elderly couple is reported missing after an excursion to the ancient site of Tindari – two seemingly unrelated cases for Inspector Montalbano to solve amid the daily complications of life at Vigàta police headquarters.
But when Montalbano discovers that the couple and the murdered young man lived in the same building, his investigation stumbles onto Sicily's brutal 'New Mafia', which leads him down a path more evil and more far-reaching than any he has been down before.
Excursion to Tindari is followed by the sixth novel in the Inspector Montalbano series, The Scent of the Night.
• ISBN: 9781529042450 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 320 • Price: R220,00 The Scent of the Night Andrea Camilleri Montalbano learned how hard it was to put on a wetsuit while in a dinghy speeding over a sea that wasn't exactly calm. Mimì, at the helm, looked tense and worried.
"Getting seasick?" the inspector asked him at one point. "No. Just sick of myself." "Why?" "Because every now and then I realize what a stupid shit I am to go along with some of your brilliant ideas.“
When an angry octogenarian holds a terrified and lovelorn secretary at gunpoint, Inspector Montalbano is reluctantly drawn into the case. The secretary's boss, a financial advisor, has vanished along with several billion lire entrusted to him by the good citizens of Vigàta. Also missing is the advisor’s young colleague, whose uncle just happens to be building a house on the site of Inspector Montalbano's very favourite olive tree…Ably abetted by his loyal and eccentric team, Montalbano, the food-loving, commitment-phobic inspector, returns for another delicious investigation served up in vintage Camilleri style.
The Scent of the Night is followed by the seventh book in the series, Rounding the Mark.
• ISBN: 9781529042467 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 240 • Price: R220,00 Rounding the Mark Andrea Camilleri
Rounding the Mark is the seventh darkly humorous novel in Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano series.
Increasingly disillusioned with his government and the world in general, Inspector Montalbano is considering retirement. He is starting to feel his age, and even his favourite restaurant has closed. But when he bumps into a dead body during a bracing swim, his detective instincts are aroused once more. Particularly when the most likely identity of the victim is a man already long buried…
Rounding the Mark is followed by the eighth novel in the series The Patience of the Spider.
• ISBN: 9781529043808 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 288 • Price: R220,00 The Patience of the Spider Andrea Camilleri
The Patience of the Spider is the eighth novel in Andrea Camilleri's wryly humorous Inspector Montalbano series.
Chief Inspector Montalbano is on enforced sick leave. But when a local girl goes mysteriously missing, the whole community takes an interest in the case. Why are the kidnappers so sure that the girl's impoverished father and dying mother will be able to find a fortune? The ever-inquisitive Montalbano steps in, to get to the heart of the matter in his own inimitable style.
The Patience of the Spider is followed by the ninth novel in the series, Paper Moon.
• ISBN: 9781529043839 • Format: Paperback • Genre: Fiction • Extent: 288 • Price: R220,00